How To Convert 2D Videos Into 3D on YouTube

Welcome to this week’s episode of The Reel Web, ReelSEO’s very own web series featuring the latest news stories, opinions, announcements, and insight from the world of online video. This week’s stories include new YouTube features like how to convert your 2D videos into 3D YouTube videos, plenty of Google Plus talk, the latest on Hulu, and some fantastic tips for video creators looking to maximize their videos’ impact and build viewership.

This week on the Reel Web, we show you guys how to easily turn your 2D video into 3D videos on YouTube and Google Hangouts is now kind of adding some new features that are kind of interesting. We’ll talk about those and Facebook and Hulu are playing kissy kissy and we’ll talk about that too.

Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another Monday of the Reel Web where every week, we highlight some of the past recent news in the
online video world and we share them with you.

First up, take a look at this chump change that Freddie Wong has raised from supporters on YouTube for an upcoming video web series he’s doing along
with some other online video creators. It only took him one day to raise over $75,000 from contributors on kickstarter.com and every time I refresh
that page, that number continues to go up. What’s the money for?

“Video Game High school is a feature length action comedy web series that we’re shooting at the end of October and putting out in the beginning of
2012. It’s set in the near future where video games, professional video games is the number one sport in the world. And kids all over the world dream
about one day being good enough to get drafted into these elite boarding schools where they can hone their skills and eventually land these
multimillion dollar pro contracts. So the tone of the show is very humorous, it’s very tongue in cheek, we’re having a lot of fun with it.”

If you’re not already familiar with Freddie Wong, he and his partner Brandon Laatsch, every week they upload a new short action video that’s just
really heavy with special effects and they’re growing to be one of the most popular YouTube groups with 2.3 million subscribers and is growing every
day.

“My name is Freddy Wong. And my name is Brandon Laatsch. Brandon and I are the guys behind the YouTube channel youtube.com/freddiew.”

What’s intriguing is why these guys are creating a web series that was made specifically for the web and not to try to transition into TV or to film or
to Hollywood or to any other platform.

“A lot of people look at web series’ as stepping stones, they look at it as okay, I’m going to do a web series and use that in order to land a feature
film.”

“It’s like Junior Varsity TV.”

“Right, exactly. It’s like, you can’t make something that’s good in the format if you don’t take the format seriously.”

“And especially a web series, what’s great about it is that you can have this freedom of format and content. You can kind of do these ideas that we
probably wouldn’t be able to pitch onto a TV network right now. And we can kind of figure out how to write it because there’s no rules.”

On their Kickstarter page, Freddie Wong writes this. We strongly believe the foundations for the future of digitally distributed content will be laid
by web series. We don’t see a web series as a stepping stone to get a feature film project or TV deal, a good web series is an end unto itself. The web
series format is uncharted territory and we want to explore it.

Google Plus added some new features to Hangouts this week, most notably the ability to join a Hangout from your Android phone. They really want this
face to face interaction thing to be as easy as possible whether you’re on the road with your mobile device or sitting at home in front of your
computer. They’ve also added the broadcast feature which lets nine other people join you just kind of like a normal hang out with web to webcam
interaction.

But now, an unlimited number of other people can just kind of observe and participate in the live chat room that goes along with the live feed you’re
streaming. This feature is still limited to a few select users on Google Plus but I hope it goes widespread soon because that along with the screen
sharing capabilities that they added in make it like the perfect tool to use as you guys hang out with me when I live edit these shows every week.

Follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page so you get the notification whenever I go live editing these shows each week so the links to those are
below.

It feels like Google is rolling out a lot of good, solid stuff lately whereas Facebook is rolling out stuff that just seems to be ticking people off
and making them angry. Granted, this is pretty much what happens every time Facebook releases any kind of major update. Do you think people just switch
Facebook to Google Plus or do you think the two entities will be able to coexist pretty well side by side? Comment below or leave a video response and
let me know what you think.

YouTube added a slew of new features last week including new editing tools, the ability to remove the time limit restriction, resumable uploads and a
whole lot more. But the one I’m most excited about is the ability to automatically your 2D videos into 3D videos. All you have to do is upload your
video to YouTube and then once it’s done processing, go to your actual view page, click the edit info button, that’s all the way to the left up there.
And then you’ll see a 3D video button that appears all the way to the right. Select normal video, check the box to enable 3D conversion and then click
save changes.

It took about a half hour for YouTube to create a 3D version of last week’s creator tip video and the results are surprisingly decent. To enable the 3D
video, just click the little 3D icon that appears in the YouTube player and you get this. (Video playback). You’ll need a pair of 3D glasses kind of
like these in order to get the full 3D effect of course but it’s surprisingly not too bad.

I have a couple of observations for you guys based on my very brief, limited tests. (Video playback). Number one, I noticed on a white background, like
this, my figure and images and such tend to pop out very well from the background using the 3D glasses but text, not so much. Sometimes the text will
just remain completely flat or sometimes just one or two letters will pop out or even worse yet, sometimes one part of a letter will pop out and look
kind of weird.

Number two, the conversion process doesn’t seem like it does a great job with black and white footage. It doesn’t really screw it up at all, it just
kind of still looks 2D in the glasses, so it’s fine but don’t expect a whole lot of pop.

Number three, I’m a big fan of Cosmic Panda, I really like it but it’s kind of limited, including the 3D conversion, you’ll have to switch back the
normal old YouTube style if you want to do this and then once it’s done converting, you can switch back to Cosmic Panda.

Number four, your 3D videos really look best at full screen in HD quality so if you plan on using the 3D conversion process in some of your videos,
just make a little annotation or something, just making note of that for your viewers.

Number five, I’m not really sure what all is entailed in the conversion process from 2D to 3D but it feels like it really lowers the saturation of the
colors in your video. And finally, number six, any annotations that you use in your original video will not be aligned properly in the 3D video. I’m
not really sure why this is, it just is.

If you want to check out any of these videos in more detail, I’ve put the links to them in the description below this video on YouTube or below this
video on ReelSEO.com depending on where you’re watching it. You’ll also find some of these links down there to some other stories you might be
interested in such as Facebook and Hulu kind of seem to be partnering together.

Hulu now has a Facebook app that lets you engage and interact with your favorite TV shows along with some of your friends. You can comment on them and
things like that. It’s kind of limited right now to be honest but has potential, maybe there’s a future to this, a new way of watching some of your
favorite TV shows along with your friends.

There’s also two more stories down there that summarize the content that came from the creator’s playbook that YouTube recently published. The first
one is about how to take advantage of tent pole events such as holidays and political events and such to really drive a lot of traffic and new views to
your videos.

And the second link down there shows you how establishing a regular schedule for uploading new content not only influences YouTube’s search algorithm
but it really helps establish an audience for your videos. So you’ll probably want to check that out, both of those links are down there, it’s good
stuff.

Starting this Wednesday, we are actually going to be separating our creator’s tip content into its own separate web video series here at
youtube.com/reelseo and at ReelSEO.com. This Wednesday, you’ll see a recap of the creator’s tip from last week’s episode of the Reel Web. But next
week, I’ll show you guys who are stuck with a really lame YouTube channel name how you can get a new YouTube URL and use that and not lose any of your
videos, subscribers, any of your views or anything like that. So stay tuned.

Of course, to get that content, you’re going to want to subscribe, you can click the button above this video here on YouTube or you can just click
right there, that way whenever we release a new video every week, you will get that right in your subscription box right here. And you’ll also find
links where you can connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, those are below. We’d love to stay in touch with you guys and interact and talk about
online video stuff throughout the week. I will see all you guys again next week for another look at the Reel Web. Bye.

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